Military intervention in Yemen is justifiable – for now

Editorial: The West’s action against the Houthi rebels may help put paid to the Iran-backed militia’s proxy war but a wider peace in the Middle East cannot be reached through the narrow straits at the mouth of the Red Sea – only by a rapid de-escalation of the conflict in Gaza

(Dave Brown)

The prime minister says that the American and British strikes against Houthi weapons bases in Yemen are “limited, necessary and proportionate action in self-defence”. He is right about that – and, realistically, the world cannot and should not accept that any entity, either a state or terrorist-controlled territory, can attack and kidnap civilian or military vessels moving lawfully through the Red Sea.

Importantly, that principle has been endorsed in a UN Security Council resolution, with Russia and China, the usual suspects, this time choosing to abstain rather than veto it. Given also that the actions have been taken in reasonable self-defence – HMS Diamond came under lethal attack recently, and a container vessel was captured and taken by the Houthis – the retaliation by the allies was also plainly an act of self-defence.

For those reasons, there should be no question about the sound legal basis for what the US and UK did, with minimal casualties.

That does not, however, make the sorties risk-free, nor the end of the matter. The Suez Canal cannot yet be counted as safe, and thus around a fifth of world trade remains in jeopardy, forced to make the long detour around the Cape of Good Hope. The prospect of shipping costs, oil prices and global inflation being pushed higher still may well have influenced Russia’s, and especially China’s, caution at the UN.

It would be a pleasant surprise if the Houthis, acting always in alliance with their sponsors in Iran, ceased bombing and threatening international shipping, but it feels unlikely. The Western warning to them was delivered with some menace, but, to put it flippantly, they are used to that.

The Houthis did, after all, survive and, even on their own terms, prosper from the seven-year bombardment meted out to them by Saudi Arabia and its own Yemeni ally, the official government. In effect a merciless proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, fought by Yemenis in their broken nation, one of the poorest, most devastated places on Earth, the war ended in stalemate and with an uneasy truce brokered by China last year. At the moment, Saudi Arabia looks unwilling to restart the conflict.

At best, there will be continuing, low-level naval and air engagements between a Western armada – it would be helpful if other maritime powers contributed to the effort – and the Houthis, funded and supplied by the Iranians.

If the West prevails, it would make the waterways safe enough to restore much, if not all, of the shipping that has been recently diverted. If not, and the skies above are filled with thousands of Iranian suicide drones raining down on navy ships and merchant vessels, then the war will obviously be in vain: shipping will not be sufficiently safe.

At that point, the West is faced with the choice to escalate. That would entail heavier bombing of Yemen, inevitably higher casualties, losing the support of the UN and the wider international community, and spreading the conflict still further.

Why, many in the West might wonder, and understandably, is Iran permitted with apparent impunity to manufacture and supply huge quantities of munitions to fuel not only Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, but Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis? Why, looking not that far ahead, is this regime still developing nuclear weapons with which to threaten its neighbours and world peace? Can the West do nothing except fight endless proxy wars in the Red Sea and, to an extent, in Gaza?

These are the kinds of questions that Joe Biden and Rishi Sunak will need to answer in the days ahead.

The military intervention in the region is justified, just as those in Afghanistan and Iraq were, at the outset, but we know how they ended – wars the West couldn’t win. So how will we win this war with the Houthis, when the Saudis, with equally impressive firepower and added proximity, could not? What will victory look like? How can Iran be pushed towards peace, assuming there is no counterrevolution against the ayatollahs? We cannot forget that Iran and its allies are theologically and ideologically dedicated to the elimination of a state of Israel and the murder of Jews.

It is impossible to understand what is happening in the Red Sea and Yemen without also taking a look at it through the prism of the Israel-Hamas conflict. Without that, and without the 7 October atrocities that provoked it, there would be few problems in the Red Sea.

This spread of the war and the ensuing chaos is precisely what Hamas planned, to drag America and Iran (and, behind them, Russia) into conflict, to stop the normalisation of Israeli relations with its regional neighbours, such as Saudi Arabia, and to alienate world opinion. Hamas cannot “win” any war with Israel, but a wider conflict would be much more evenly matched.

To that extent, Israel and the West have been falling into a trap laid by Hamas analogous to the one laid by Osama bin Laden on 9/11. In an ironic twist, it would also suit Benjamin Netanyahu if the US took really decisive action against Iran, Israel’s most persistent and dangerous enemy. Even by the standards of the Middle East, this is complex.

The fastest route to a wider peace is not through the narrow straits at the mouth of Red Sea, but a rapid de-escalation of the war in Gaza.

This latest conflict cannot be allowed to develop a momentum of its own. The war in Gaza has long since turned counterproductive for Israel, witnessed by the fact that even now, after the displacement of virtually the entire 2 million population, the flattening of cities and the deaths of 23,000 Gazans, Hamas is no nearer to defeat or surrender in any meaningful sense. The most senior Hamas commander dealt with by Israel was at his base in Beirut, far away from Gaza City. The claim of genocide by Israel lodged by South Africa at the International Court of Justice is contested, but it is harming the support and sympathy for Israel that genuinely exists among its friends and allies.

These are the kinds of issues that Mr Sunak will need to address if he is to convince the Commons and the British public to back him on Monday. He has a considerable task of persuasion ahead of him.